The series of International Symposia on Neurosecretion began in 1953 at the Stazione Zoologica di Napoli, having been organized by the late Professor Ernst Scharrer and Professor Berta Scharrer who were then members of the faculty of the School of Medicine of the University of Colorado. The most recent was organized by Professor Andrey L. Polenov at the Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Leningrad in 1976. The VIIIth Symposium of the series will be the first to be held in the United States. The VIIIth Symposium, organized on a "workshop" basis, has three major objectives: (1) integration of research on neurosecretion with related fields of neurobiology; (2) presentation and discussion of new concepts and methods in the field of neurosecretion with emphasis on comparative aspects: (3) provision for the first time of an opportunity for a selected group of younger American ivestigators to participate in an International Symposium on Neurosecretion. It is anticipated that the published proceedings, like those of the seven preceeding symposia will be a significant contribution to our knowledge of both the biomedical and comparative aspects of neurosecretion and its relation to other fields of neurobiology.